Color vision deficiencies have not been considered an issue for a long time. However, there are many concerns emerging on whether or not a person with color deficiency has challenges towards performing certain activities of daily living or even workplace. It is important to note that the severity of color deficiency varies and there has been no treatment for any of the conditions. Major conditions are genetic, however, there are types of color deficiencies that are not inherited and are developed after birth. The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is the US civil rights provisions that aim at protecting the persons with disability against discrimination and based upon its provisions on safety concerns, it is debatable on whether color deficiency can be generally considered a disability. To protect the individuals with challenges in performing the daily life activities and accessing certain jobs despite their qualifications, then color deficiency should be considered a disability with exceptions to certain related minor conditions under the ADA. This paper, therefore, reviews the provisions of the ADA laws as it reflects on research on the related topics to validate the relevance of color deficiency as a disability.
The ADA gives the definition of disability particularly with direct respect to an individual: First, the person has a mental or physical challenge that has substantial limit to a single or many life activities of the person; the impairment has to be on record; and finally, the person has been subjected to one or more of the actions that are protected by the American Disability Act with regards to having such impairments (ADA, 2009). However, if the definition of life activity is broadened it encompasses the activities of care of one’s self, the performance of the manual task, vision, hearing, breathing, learning, and reading, concentration, thinking, communicating or working. The ADA doesn’t give any specific condition that may trigger the protection of persons with color deficiency to validate the evaluation of such conditions under its definition of disability.
The visual impairments may be evaluated under ADA but the Act doesn’t consider the benefits of low vision devises and effects of lenses and glasses when finding out the effects they have on major life activities (ADA, 2009). The color deficient people face many challenges in daily life that many sighted individuals may not be aware of. The problems range from many simple life activities that include the choice and preparation of food, gardening, sporting activities, driving and selecting certain clothes to wear (Amanda,623). Apart from the activities, color deficient persons may be able to notice the changes in peoples’ moods by the change in color of their faces or even noticing a child getting sunburnt. The access to education, career choices and examination grades can be a challenge to people with this condition. These are just but examples of typical daily problems of color deficiency.
In the case food, a related survey has revealed that a third of the total color deficient people have problems distinguishing foodstuffs while buying or preparing the foods. The ones with red-green deficiency see very limited variations between most colors (Evans, 41). There are strategies to help them cope with the conditions, but still shopping for vegetables and fruits would be difficult. If a person is unable to spot a green potato then this situation can be very dangerous, the green potato contains solanine which is poisonous during pregnancy. Furthermore, certain hotels and cafés serve undercooked foods which may be unnoticeable to color deficient individuals unless they taste. If these people are not protected by the law then the public may take advantage of their condition to sell bad foods which can be life-threatening to some individuals.
Gardening may not be a center of interest to color deficient people since the flowering crops may prove hard to distinguish from the leaves. The fruits and berries cannot be spotted easily from the vegetation as well as difficulty in telling whether a plant is already dead or alive when carrying out the weeding process. In his book “Color Blindness: Causes and Effects”(p. 15), Donald Mclntyre narrates an incident in which the checkout operator in his locality, operating a local garden center, assisted him when he almost bought a dead rosemary plant simply because he wasn’t able to distinguish the color from that of alive plant. Picking berries from a farm to the color deficient is dependent on the size rather than color; however, the process can be slow and very lengthy (Amanda, 641). In certain cases they often wait for wait for a strong contrast between the ripe and unripe fruit, they may end up picking fruits that have gone bad. There are many people employed as gardeners but the employers may not consider the possibility of their condition affecting the performance of their duties (Roach, 152). Since the ADA is very categorical to a worker with disability who may not be able to perform certain tasks and protects them from abuse and discrimination, this is an ideal case related to the act that should be considered as a disability.
According to Dennis Overton’s “Color Blindness: I See Red When You See Green” he recounts an incident when was handed the car keys by the manager to move his green pickup parked in the street to the premise’ car pack (Owsley et al., 535). He was not able to distinguish which of the many pick-ups belonged to the manager from his condition. Driving may prove to be difficult when it comes to following the traffic lights at nights and even distinguishing between the street lights in some conditions (Owsley et al., 535). Dennis’ incident points towards a career choice that is not affected by his color deficiency, however, it is an indicator that whatever career a person may follow, if he or she is color deficient, there is possibility of coming across unexpected difficulties related to their conditions therefore if the government through the ADA have to protect individuals with all forms of disability towards discriminatory acts then it should consider Color deficiency as a disability. If the color deficiency is severe enough to prevent the person from the dealing with daily living, then, just like other visual impairments, qualifies for protection.
The choice of clothes to wear may matter to the normal people but to the color impaired, there is no concern even on the names of the colors they would like wear or even have an idea on the color choices that suits them but they will still have to be judged by the society based on how they appear (Owsley et al., 538). The labels on clothes are not of much help to the color impaired since they even fail to indicate color. If this condition is pointed out to the color normal people under the law, specifically the ADA, the probability of teasing the color deficient counterparts based on their strange dress sense caused by the inability to distinguish cloth colors just like other visually impaired people will be limited.
On the other hand away from the daily life activities, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) gives some guidelines to cases where vision impairments can acquire workplace protection under the ADA, and the ways by which color deficiency can be accommodated in the workplace (Roach, 151). Whether or not color deficiency is a disability under the ADA remains subject to the court ruling. Of the many court cases addressing these issues, the results are quite the result are quite consistent and point towards the view that visionary deficits do not qualify as a disability. The views are based on the position that color based deficiencies have no substantial impairment to the individual’s ability to take part in major life activities, more so, at the workplace. In a number of cases, the courts consider the complaints of discrimination to have only been raised when the jobs have already been denied, this means that the probability of validating such cases depend on the early declaration of one’s condition prior to a job application. The jobs are denied based on the applicant’s ability to live normal lives insinuating that the color deficiency never affected the individual’s life activities.
Regarding conditions in which color deficiency may exclude an individual from a particular type of employment, for example, the military jobs, due to federal laws or from the independent adoption of employers’ standards (Roach, 152). In aggregate, such provisions may exclude the person from that type of job, courts are certain that someone’s inability to do a type of work will not have a blanket limitation on the person’s ability to work in any other job; such a rule only affects the single job. The laws have, however, stated that valid physical job requirements that involve characteristic or a condition that does not reflect a high level of impairments is lawful just like the requirements that aim at limiting the traits that make an applicant unsuitable for a job.
In the case pilots, Color Vision Defective (CVD) persons are often questioned over their ability to perform their duties, while only a few of the individuals are actually color deficient. The definition of CVD individuals limits their condition to reduced ability to identify colors with their names or discriminate between colors; this, however, does not affect their potential of flying planes (ADA, 2009). The provisions of the courts vindicate the proposition made based on clear provisions of the ADA pertaining to the Aviation Color Perception Standards. The pilots in question, however, operate safely at the high levels of the aviation industry including positions of the international airline captains. The members feel that the aviation color perception standard is a discriminatory approach since it has no place with regards to the aviation safety regulations. Most color deficient engineers share similar stories that narrate their difficulties at the workplace. Most of them will have difficulties in accessing information from various sources inclusive of the internet, workplace documents, and presentations, charts, diagrams and photographs that have color variations. The occupation requires that one observes the electrical appliances and machines that are programmed to indicate certain conditions based red green or orange LED displays.
Doctors are not left behind since diagnosis of rashes and inflammations may prove hard when one is color deficient. Hairdressing services that require coloring of the hair can be so hard to a color deficient person. Despite the plight of such employees, many organizations do not take into account the ability of all the people they address to read and understand the documents and presentations produced (Roach, 152). The unique thing is that the businesses in question do not realize the possibility of leaving out about five percent of the markets they target due to the effects of color deficiency. Even if the law is so categorical in protection in the disabled, the plight of color deficient school children should be addressed. These are minors who struggle in their classrooms among their colleagues who are color normal due to lack of awareness and at times ignorance of the parents and their teachers (Ullucci, 533). The government recognizes that color deficiency can fall under the Special Education Need but is silent on their support to the teachers, parents, and schools. There are few or no teachers trained to tackle this problem or ever how to deal with the color blind learners in a school setting. The examinations are rather discriminatory towards these children since several papers have sections that cannot be accessed by students with color deficiency. Even their career choice is limited due to the condition. Whenever a dream career is shuttered based on the regulation provided by the employers, the student may experience a certain degree of psychological torture.
The case of police officers is not very different. The confusion comes when an individual qualifies for a position but fails to get the job simply because he is considered disabled due to color blindness (HealthScout, 15-26). One such case appeared in 1999 were an officer was denied the position of a senior police deputy because he failed the color acuity in a vision test. The police department filed an appeal which was ruled in favor of the officer based on the perception that the action was as damaging as a form of discrimination similar to that of an actual disability. The court further concluded that color vision requirement in police service are related to patrol duties and the application of the requirement are not subject to the ADA. The court ruling declared that color deficiency is not a disability.
To exercise fairness under the laws of disability, the ADA should provide protection of persons with color deficiency since they experience many challenges in performing life tasks just like other visually impaired individuals; however, the severity of the condition should be considered when looking into such provisions. When addressing workplace concerns with regards to disability, various states have different laws of addressing such discriminatory actions. The laws may even be broader than the ADA and can accommodate issues that are not covered by the Act. Whether or not an employer discriminates against the person with color deficiency is subject to investigation under the state laws. The law is not enough to solve the problem, individuals with color deficiency need assistance from the society by labeling the items that need color recognition; learning to distinguish color based on location, for example, on the street lights; making color contrasts as minimal as possible; and applying the use of the special tinted color glasses that can assist them differentiate between certain colors.
References
McIntyre, Donald. Colour blindness: causes and effects. Dalton Publishing, 2002.
Evans, Arlene. Color is in the Eye of the Beholder: A Guide to Color Vision Deficiency and Colorblindness. CVD Pub, 2003.
HealthScout. Colorblind: Retrieved, from http://www.healthscout.com/ency/1/001002.html (2007)
Lewis, Amanda E. "What group?” Studying whites and whiteness in the era of “color‐blindness." Sociological theory22.4 (2004): 623-646.
Owsley, Cynthia, and Gerald McGwin. "Vision impairment and driving." Survey of Ophthalmology 43.6 (1999): 535-550.
Roach, Angela. "Regarded as Disabled Employment Discrimination Claim: Fact or Fiction in California." JL " Soc. Challenges 5 (2003): 155.
Ullucci, Kerri. "Book Review: Color-Blind Discrimination and the Persistence of Inequality in the United States." Urban Education 41.5 (2006): 533-540.
Vote, Senate, and House Vote. "Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990." (1990).
